


Oath

by odoridango



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Manga Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-28
Updated: 2014-10-28
Packaged: 2018-02-22 23:43:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2526023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odoridango/pseuds/odoridango
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I don’t believe you can lead me wrong.” Mikasa and Armin, on strength, loyalty, and maybe, love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oath

**Author's Note:**

> I promised Armin/Mikasa a long, long time ago AND LOOK IT'S FINALLY HERE

Armin is kind, but not foolish. Precious, in a different way. When Eren pushes her away, hurts her, doesn’t see reason, when Eren crawls back with apology and guilt written into every pore and every word he speaks, Armin is there. And Eren is many things, debtor, brother, duty, loyalty and responsibility, but he is not Armin.

Armin is strong because he is weak. That’s what she wanted to scream at him on the rooftop in Trost. A brief moment of rage that shook her so deeply, it froze her on the inside. Armin wanted to be left behind. Armin wanted to die. Armin thought he was a burden. Never again, she had sworn, never again, she wouldn’t be left alone, and she wouldn’t let him think that way.

“You are strong because you are weak,” she actually tells him on another day, holding him close, hand gripping his, his breath sour with vomit, the smell of gunpowder on his clothing. “Because you don’t fight with your body. Because you are honest with yourself, and honest with us.

“Don’t regret what you do,” she tells him, wipes the edge of his mouth gently with her scarf. The color is dulled now, but it’s still red, recognizably so. “And don’t regret what you say. We listen to you. I don’t believe you can lead me wrong.”

Late at night in the cabin, sometimes they sat out in the kitchen, candle burning low. Armin watched her stitch by candlelight, covering the white circle of taut cloth inch by inch with delicate thread, intricacy blooming from her fingers. She used the same frame and thread that Armin and Eren got her for her birthday in their second years as trainees. What she has she keeps, and she keeps well.

“Do those patterns stand for anything?” Armin asked, hushed voice loud and ringing in the silence. He watched her with hazy blue eyes, lulled by the meditative, methodical motions of her hand. Push in, push out. Easy. Sharp.

 _Family_ , is what she always thinks, feels the weight of the everpresent cloth around her wrist, remembers the smell and tang of iron in the air, and on her tongue. She had run her thumb around a chain of swirling curlicues, rippling down the fabric one after the other. “I don’t know all of them,” she said. “The flowers are for bounty. These symbols that form the border are for luck. The hawks, for prosperity. The rest, I make up as I go.”

Armin glanced up at her through his golden fringe. He was still smaller than both her and Eren, but she knew he would grow more. He might never grow big and bulky, but he would grow. He was already growing, in undetectable ways.

“They’re all good things,” he said.

Her hand had stilled then, and she looked at him, really looked. He met her gaze easily, open and sincere.

“We deserve good things,” she said, and turned back to her work.

It’s the same kerchief she uses to clean Armin’s face when he’s assaulted, reaches out slowly, cautiously, until he leans into her, and lets her wipe his face with cold water, dab across his cheeks, swipe at the dry skin beneath his eyes. She stays with him when he strips down in the shower, silent sentinel to the gasping breaths and shaky sobs that intersperse the steady hiss of water. And again, she rubs the dirt and grease away when he takes his first life.

“Am I doing the right thing?” he asks her. She runs careful fingers through his hair, doesn’t care about the buildup of oil or of other things, like guilt, like culpability. Presses dry, cracked lips to a sweaty forehead, doesn’t think of it until she tastes stale salt on her lips later, then blood when the skin finally splits.

“You do what you think is right,” she murmurs, and that is all she will ever ask of him. To continue doing what he does, to do what he can.

 _I don’t believe you can lead me wrong_ , she had told him, and that’s what she still believes. When they reach freedom, when they walk into soft, gleaming sands hand in hand and feel the water lap at their ankles, the smell of salt rise in their noses, it’s Armin who will have brought them there. It’s Armin who will have shown them the way.

“Okay,” Armin says, voice small, and in what brief respite they have she huddles close, feels him link a pinky with hers like they are still small children in the flower meadows of Shiganshina, making a promise. Shake on it, swallow a thousand needles if you don’t keep your word. But adults have higher stakes than that.

She slides the damp kerchief down his face one more time, slows when he cradles her hand. Symbols of her own making, markings of her heritage, her family and loyalty, press against his cheek. Only good things are sewn into that fabric, because that’s what they deserve.

 


End file.
